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Inform women and let them decide on reproductive choices, include men in the conversation

Today, on World Contraception Day, we use this opportunity to talk about women’s rights to choose and speak up against discrimination and any barrier to their ability to exercise their rights. Women’s sexual and reproductive rights are indispensable and intrinsic to them being women. They cannot be denied freedom to exercise this right.

As independent women, we have often raised the discourse of gender equality and rights and we believe that change begins with empowering women to make informed decisions and including men in the conversation. It is time to give women the choice to decide whether, when and how many children they want.

In our society, gender inequality manifests in numerous ways: sex-selective abortion, child marriage, dowry, domestic violence, sexual harassment, unequal pay, lack of property rights, rape and the list goes on. Women are subjected to live in a society which does not encourage them to speak for themselves. Young girls are brought up being told that sex is a taboo, that it should never be spoken about and yet they are forcefully married and child bearing becomes the sole purpose of their survival.

This is worsened by lack of information and access to contraception and statistics reiterate this grim picture: less than half of the married women in India use a modern method of contraception. Negligible participation of men in family planning further adds to the burden on women: merely 0.3% men in the country have undergone sterilisation and only 5.6% men use condoms.

Patriarchy dictates that a man voluntarily using a condom or undergoing vasectomy becomes less of a man, his manhood being affected by his participatory decision to take responsibility to plan his family. “Introducing contraception to men is like trying to give a child medicine, they know why it’s required but they will come up with all sorts of excuses to avoid it.” We had a friend, belonging to the upper middle class, who mentioned to her date the word ‘contraception’ and he asked her what is that?

So sometimes, it isn’t just a question of education, it is a question of mentality and most often in our culture we tend to leave men out of the discussion. We need to include men in the conversation of contraception, explain Intra Uterine Device (IUD), pills and condoms. Of course, schools should incorporate this in sex education, but parents at home can begin in small ways by letting boys know when their sisters get their periods and what it entails.

Involving men in conversations about women’s sexual and reproductive health can play a critical role in overcoming the hesitation and reluctance of couples to discuss these issues. In order to ensure that women’s voices are not lost in the noise of their husbands and families, we need to inculcate a mindset of equal participation.

As couples, routine visits to a gynaecologist should be something that men and women do together and women should not be solely responsible for it. These small steps have a big impact in ensuring equal participation in decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Not only do women need to be given the information about safe, protected sex and contraceptive methods available, they should also have the freedom to make informed choices about planning their families to ensure that they are physically, mentally and emotionally prepared for each pregnancy. And this can happen only when men participate in the conversation and take responsibility for family planning.

The struggle of a being a woman in India begins in the mother’s womb. Born as a girl child in a patriarchal society, she is not allowed to make her own decisions. As a young girl, her parents decide that sending her to school would be a waste of time and money: today nearly 18% girls drop out of school after completing primary education.

As an adolescent, society decides that it is a taboo to talk about puberty, menstruation or sexuality and she does not get the information she needs. As a woman, society decides whether, when and who she must marry and as a wife, her identity and rights as an individual stay hidden. Even the life-changing decisions of having children is taken for her, not by her. It is time for this to change.